good; thus retiring to the divine and heavenly gift, it will minister to every state and condition though you may have no outward teaching; and will preserve in humble waiting, till it be a proper time to break up your meetings with that decency and solemnity which should attend our minds in such service. O that the weightiness of our spirits, and the gravity of our deportment in religious meetings, may be such as to excite an awful sensation in observers! and that at the conclusion, we may avoid trivial or unnecessary conversation: our conduct as well as countenances bespeaking that we had been with Jesus.

They who are obedient to the universal injunction of our Saviour, "Watch," are prepared for the due fulfilling of every duty; and eminently so for that most essential one of worship.

How many feel themselves languid, when assembled for this solemn purpose, for want of a previous preparation of heart! The mind crowded with thoughts on outward things, or freely conversing on them when we approach the place for public worship, and resuming them with avidity on our return, we are not likely to fill up the interval to profit; and to such, their meeting together may prove a form, as empty as any of those, out of which we believe truth called our forefathers, and still calls

us.

Dear Friends, keep all your meetings in the authority, wisdom and power of truth, and the unity of the blessed Spirit ; and the God of peace be with you:

MODERATION AND TEMPERANCE.

IT is affectionately recommended, that Friends be careful to use moderation on account of marriages, births, burials, and on all other occasions; conformably to the pure truth, which leads into great circumspection and would preserve from giving any just cause of offence or stumbling to any on the other hand a conduct and practice assimilated to the maxims and fashions of the world, not only evinces our own individual unfaithfulness to the salutary restrictions of the principle we make profession of, but

is an obstruction to the progress of reformation, promotes various evils, and tends to obscure that light and lessen its precious savour which our example should be a means of diffusing among men, agreeably to the exhortation of the holy apostle, "Let your moderation be known unto all men, the Lord is at hand." Phil. iv. 5. And as the all-seeing eye beholds our thoughts, and views us in all our ways and actions, what manner of men ought we to be in all godliness of life, and sobriety of deportment.

Many religiously attentive minds having been long painfully burdened with observing the corrupting, debasing and ruinous effects consequent on the importation and retailing large quantities of distilled spirits, whereby the intemperate use of them is greatly aided and encouraged, to the impoverishment of many, distem

pering the constitutions and understandings of many more, and increasing vice and dissoluteness in the land, it is the united sense of this meeting, that well concerned Friends in all quarters, be earnestly excited to suffer the affecting importance of this mighty evil, religiously to impress their minds, and animate them with lively concern to exert honest endeavours by example and loving entreaty to caution, and dissuade all our members from being concerned in the importation or retailing distilled spirits, or giving countenance thereto, and from using them in the time of harvest or otherwise. And where it is apprehended there may be occasion of using any as medicine, it is earnestly desired that religious caution be observed therein.

Under the weight and pressure of the deeply interesting concern for the main